Free Straight Cut by Madison Smartt Bell Page B

next became conscious, I was leaning against a plaster wall. Mimmo was working a key in a huge padlock which was set in a crossbar in front of a green door.
    “Eccola,” he said, when the lock gave way. He pushed the door open and I stumbled through it. Mimmo reached in and handed me the key.
    “At the trattoria on the corner they also have a key,” he said. “In case yours should be lost.”
    “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you very much.” I was leaning against the door, which was open only a crack.
    “Tomorrow …,” Mimmo said.
    His voice faded as I closed the door. It was dim inside, though a window toward the rear let in a little light. There was a large bolt high on the door, which I drew shut.
    Underneath the window of the little room there was a bed. Little puffs of dust rose from the spread when I lay down. The petals of the flowers were turning scarlet. I sat up and dragged my bag closer to the bed, so I could hold the handle while I slept. The petals of the flowers were turning blue.
    The next time I woke up it was dark outside. I got off the bed and began looking for a light switch, tripping over hard heavy objects that seemed to be scattered all over the floor. Then I found a lamp on a shelf opposite the bed.
    It was a small room. There was the bed, with an impression of my body in the dust on the coverlet. On the floor there were a lot of welded metal sculptures. These were what I had been stubbing my toes on, I could see. There was also some welding equipment and a mask in one corner, near the door.
    A couple of steps went up into another room. I went in there and found a wall switch. This room was larger and had fluorescent ceiling lights. There were several plain wood tables and some stuffed furniture. Shelves on the walls held more sculptures, smaller ones, and a litter of papers and books, the latter in both French and Italian. One wall was lined with windows which overlooked an enclosed courtyard. Toward the far end of the room there was a refrigerator, a double-burner hotplate, a sink, and a shower stall.
    Whoever normally lived in this place didn’t look to have been home in a long time. I was sneezing from all the dust. So I took a shower. After I had dried off and dressed again I felt a bit more alert. I started trying to figure out what time it was in America, but that was too complicated.
    There was a box of dried pasta in the kitchen area and I boiled this up and ate it plain. It went down better than you might have expected. It had been many hours since I’d eaten.
    I cleaned the pot and went back into the front room, where I found a door to the courtyard, which I hadn’t noticed before. The courtyard was sizable. There were a couple of ironwork chairs out there and a broken table and some more of the welded sculptures. A wire trellis, about six and a half feet off the ground, covered the entire area. There were vines growing all over the trellis, but they looked more like weeds than grapevines to me. Still, not bad.
    I went back inside to see if there was anything to drink. I found the end of a liter of red wine on a kitchen shelf, but I could smell that it had turned. Never cared much for wine anyway. Since I didn’t feel up to going out I decided to forget it. I wandered around the main room fingering the small metal sculptures on the shelves. They didn’t seem to be much good to me. But behind one of them I found half a liter of Polish vodka.
    Eccola.
    I had taken a drink of it before it occurred to me to wonder if it might be metal polish or something like that. But it tasted pretty much like vodka, and it didn’t kill me right away. I took the bottle out into the court and sat down on one of the chairs. There was a palish light filtering down through the weeds on the trellis. It might even have been moonlight, could have fooled me. I had another drink or two. Then I corked up the bottle and went back to bed.
    In the morning I woke up at a decent hour and went out to the